Hey, did I ever mention that I have absolutely no natural
sense of direction? Don’t make a joke
like “oh, women just don’t have that,” because some women I know are actually
good at getting places and know where they’re going (like, “I’m going
south”).
I am not one of these people. It’s ok, I embrace it, kind of like my former
neighbor Robin in New York, who has no sense of smell. She just lives with it, but it’s not like she
is in denial about it or anything.
Anyway, this problem usually makes itself known the most when I move to
a new place and have to figure out how to get around or I go to a new place on a business trip,
and I’m wondering—do they have occupational therapy for people who JUST DON’T
KNOW WHERE THEY’RE GOING? Do they? This is something I am actually wondering.
So, thank God for GPS, because as you know, we just
relocated to the East Coast, and OH MY GOD is the highway system confusing
here. Or maybe that’s my complete lack
of directional sense talking. Following
my GPS-assisted cross country journey, I have been acclimating myself to things
like going to the store, driving to meetings on time, and getting myself to the
airport in time for flights, because the last time we lived on the East Coast
we never left the city, I didn’t drive a car for four years, and even though it
took me awhile to master the New York City subway system, this problem was not as pronounced in NY
because the city itself is based on a grid system, meaning I could look up and
tell myself “the numbers are getting higher, that means you’re going
north.” This obviously does not apply
to the West Village or the downtown areas, where I did not (and still don’t)
spend very much time (maybe for this reason).
Why am I bringing this up now?
Because DUDE, I want you to know the super-duper extra
effort that it takes me to go places, for instance, how I have to do at least
two “trial runs” of new things and how I have to make a Google map, AND set the
GPS, AND set the little map in my iPhone— the one where I am the purple dot and
the blue line represents where I am supposed to be going, and periodically I
have to double-check to make sure that the purple dot is still on the blue
line, and (no lie) HALF THE TIME I AM GOING IN THE EXACT OPPOSITE DIRECTION, and this causes me to cry from frustration, and that does not help me get there any faster but at least I feel a little better.
So—ahem, knowing this, I set out for the JFK
airport FOUR HOURS IN ADVANCE, thinking I was going to be all cool, and even
though I did get turned around for ten minutes (I blame Google maps for
omitting one freeway), I got right back on the road, only to be stuck in so
much traffic that I barely made it in time for the flight.
On the bright side, the flight was wonderful (a first?), I like the hotel, and I
am now almost done with my business trip and have only had one direction-related
meltdown, and as it turns out, that one was justified because the people at
Disney World said that they get hundreds of calls per day from people who can’t
find one particular convention center address because the street number is
often confused with another address a few miles away (seems like Disney in all
their infinite power could find a way to fix this, right? Weird).
Of course, no one told me this until I had already cried and gotten
there, but to my credit, I took notes, and the next time I made it there with
time to spare, and have been back twice since.
So there!
Seriously, is "directional dyslexia" a thing? Is there a treatment?